Breathless, Speechless
by dontwaitupxx
Summary: She left him breathless. He left her speechless. In another lifetime, a young man and woman meet each other by a heart shaped pond.


Breathless, Speechless

By: dontwaitupxx

* * *

He wasn't sure what possessed him to climb the Tuft Mountain. It was a pilgrimage made by many a young Hylian, with the hopes to meet their true love at its peak. He wasn't expecting anything nor was he sure what to expect. He hadn't even meant to make the trip, but his legs had started walking and before long he was already halfway there, so he might as well finish the journey.

He climbed the last few steps to the top.

Time stood still, then, for he saw her from across the pond. He felt a sense of nostalgia, a sense of belonging and knowing and home, and though he had never seen her before in _this_ life, he knew that he had seen her before. Desperate for a memory, or a recollection, or anything, he fought for a glimpse into how he knew her. What he came up with was foreign to him, yet as natural as breathing.

Her long, blonde hair reminded him of strings on a harp, playing a soft tune. It brought with it memories high in the air, somehow, the wind cascading and dancing around them. He was soaring with her, atop creatures he had never before seen or imagined. He wasn't sure how he knew this and he had never thought it before, but he knew it to be correct and true.

Her emerald eyes reminded him of dark twilight skies, casting dark grey and green shadows across the land. It brought with it memories of darkness; an absence of light, but still all the more beautiful. He remembered running towards her, sometimes on two legs and sometimes on four, but he remembered his desperation to not only save the light from the dark, but the dark from the light. One could not exist without the other.

She moved about delicately, as she stood, her movements reminding him of a deep, ancient ocean, covering the world. Its waves crashed against the sparse, yet elegant, islands that dotted the ocean, and he could hear her laugh against the sea salted air, their ship crashing against the waters, whisking them away to some unknown corner of the world, with not a care in the world.

Her smile rivaled that of the sun. He was taken back to a beautiful forest, where deep within lived the children of the forest and its overseer, with fairies floating around amongst delicate, blue flowers. Soft blossom petals floated around a great tree at its center, where time seemed naught but a myth.

Her voice was that of a soft melody. An ocarina whistled on the wind, its music playing a sad sort of lullaby. Though he had never heard it before that moment, it was a song he knew, that spoke to him at the core of his being.

And him…

She had been sitting at the top of the heart shaped pond, among the blue nightshades and wildflowers. She couldn't say what had brought her here. She had reached the peak of the summit earlier that afternoon to find it empty, abandoned perhaps. The fabled pond was no longer a legend, she had noted, childhood legends and rumors turning into truth and fact.

It wasn't until the sun began to set that she began to hear footsteps, the sound of grass crunching and the sound of leaves rustling. From the southern entrance, she saw him then, coming up over the mountainside to face her from across the pond, and she gasped, standing up.

Something about him spoke to her, and yet she could not place how or why that was. She could have sworn that she knew him, and yet he did not have one of those faces that looked like everyone else. It was unique, and intense, and soft, and _dangerous_, yet she felt completely safe, even safer then, with him across the pond from her.

His eyes were a piercing blue; not quite unlike a wolf, and suddenly she saw it in her minds eye: a silent companion in the shadows of twilight. She imagined, then, a world quite similar to hers, cast in twilight, with shades of magenta, green, and dark casting shadows, and she remembered the wolf there, yet she didn't know why.

His hands were rough, as though he had raised many sails sailing the seas. She was reminded of blue skies and blue seas, both meeting at the horizon, chasing each other indefinitely. She heard a song: three notes strung together, and felt the wind change around her, at the will of its master.

He smelled of cedar, of horses, and something else, brilliant and delicate, and she was reminded of a world lost to the wild, of temples and villages and castles being engulfed by the wilderness around them, of grasses overgrown, of woodlands flourishing, of small, delicate blue flowers thriving.

His hair was shaggy, a wild golden hue, and she was reminded of a floating city in the sky, overlooking the surface down below, of a goddess statue, the first of its kind, and a sailcloth. She was standing with him, smiling at him, in a simpler time.

His voice was the harmony to her melody. He had moved towards her then, every movement intentional, and she realized that though she had never seen him in _this_ life, she knew that she had seen him. Horse hooves galloped in the fields, ocarinas and harps soared in a vicious crescendo, and time stood still in this moment.

By now, the two of them were standing in front of each other, silent, except for their hearts pounding, the gentle breeze from the peak of the mountain swaying around them in a little dance.

They both looked at each other, a thousand words they wanted to say hung in the air.

"Hi," he breathed, and that one word spoke of lifetimes of words not said, of lifetimes he spent alongside her, of lifetimes spent loving her. That one word spoke of adventures and dreams and tragedies and legends that he could not fathom and of memories that could not be his, but were.

In response to that one word, she knew not how to reply: for in moments like this, what is there left to say?

* * *

_fin._


End file.
